Brian the Blogger!

Hey Everyone! First and foremost, I hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving!  I had a great time with Paula and my girls.  We were especially thankful this year, as my daughter Hannah had her tonsils out 8 days ago and, even though she is still on the mend, she felt well enough to join our family for dinner at a nice dinner at Yankee Trace. I need your help.  Now that I have completed the posts on Expose', I have decided to move forward with doing reviews on another '80s band:  Culture Club.  My question to you is this:  would you like for me to review all their 80's output, or just their most popular album Colour By Numbers ?  You can email directly at bmandude71@gmail.com and let me know your opinion. Have a great rest of your weekend and I look forward reading your email! All the best, Brian

           I try to smile so the hurt won't show.  Tell everybody I was glad to see you go. By the summer of 1990, Expose' was the undisputed queens of pop and dance music, and were on a world tour to promote their sophomoric release What You Don't Know .  Then, tragedy struck:  Gioia began experiencing throat problems.  The group cut their tour short so Gioia could seek medical treatment and heal.  Ultimately, Gioia lost her voice.  Doctors would diagnose her with a benign tumor on her vocal chords.  Throat specialists had recommended surgery to remove the tumor, but if they nicked her chords, she risked the chance of permanently losing her speaking voice, not to mention her singing voice.  The risks were too high for her to consider surgery and talking had to be kept to a minimum.  For the time being, Ann and Jeanette decided to take time off and wait for Gioia to recover.  Be the end of 1990, it was...

They say I should be acting cool, they tell me I'm a fool, they don't see the things I see in you... By the summer of 1988, Expose' was one of the hottest female bands of the late 1980's.  In fact, they were in the catbird seat:  their debut album, Exposure , was a double-platinum success yielding a record-setting four top ten hits singles.  Their last single, Season's Change , had peaked at Number One on the Hot 100.  That being said, there was a new challenge on the horizon in the form of their follow-up second album.  It seemed like a lot of dance acts could not maintain their chart success with a second album.  However, Expose' had three things going for them:  One, Ann, Jeanette,and Gioia had grown close touring to support the Exposure album and had become like sisters.  Second, they had their boss, Arista President, Clive Davis, behind them.  Lastly, their producer, Lewis Martinee, had some killer new songs up his sleev...

A few days ago, my girls and I sat together in the living room and watched It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown .  I have seen this charming special countless times over the years and have enjoyed it immensely.  There was something special about this viewing that I wanted to talk about in this blog. Peanuts was the brainchild of Charles Schultz, who had first created Peanuts as a comic strip in 1950 and it ran daily until 2000.  Schultz was contacted about making his Peanuts Gang into several holiday specials through the years.  It's The Great Pumpkin , A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving , and A Charlie Brown Christmas are Hoff Family favorites. Anyone who knows me knows immediately knows that I connect to music.  (see my last two blogs)  In the recent years, I have paid more attention to the music in background.  Scored, crafted, and performed by Vince Guaraldi.  He is the one who wrote the Peanuts Theme entitled Linus and Lucy and that ...

                            Sometimes, people play with love, falling in love is just a game..... Picture this:  1984.  Girl bands and groups on the radio were nothing new.  Madonna, The Pointer Sisters, the Bangles, and Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam were just a smattering of female artists that ruled the airwaves with their unique hits.  However, 1984 was the year that introduced a new style of music called Freestyle (a singable chorus, drum machines, and keyboard solos),  and it was performed by a group of three ladies calling themselves Expose'.  This hot new female band consisted of an eclectic mix of women:  Ann Curless, Gioia Bruno (pronounced Joy-a) and Jeanette Jurado.  These women went on to define an era of dance music and set records in the music industry that are tough to beat even today.  This blog will focus on the singles released from their smash, Lat...

If you were growing up in the 70's and 80's, and listening to the radio, the Pointer Sisters were ubiquitous; their songs saturated the airwaves.  There was not a time that I didn't enjoy one of their many hits, and this blog will focus on the singles of  their Triple Platinum album Break out . When the Pointers were recording songs for what would become Break Out , they were already stars in their own right.  They had a Grammy to their name for Best Country Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group for a song that they wrote called Fairytale .  They had amassed several gold singles and gold albums, and they had a massive hits in the early 80's with songs like He's So Shy and Slow Hand . The album, prior to Break Out,  was entitled So Excited.   The first single off the album was the snoozer American Music , which charted in the Pop Top Twenty.  The song's sluggish performance  affected the second single that was released enti...